Wasteland 2 Previews and Interview
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We have rounded up a good chunk of Wasteland 2 coverage that has been published during these holidays, all based on the beta builds of the title available through Steam's Early Access program.
IGN:
The key issue is the interface. This is unsurprising, given how similar Wasteland 2 feels to the original Fallout and its control scheme, which was awkward in 1997 and has only gotten worse with age. Perhaps it's impossible to have an isometric RPG with complex character skills and inventories, and a smooth interface at the same time. Almost every single one of Fallout's successors has been simpler, either by lowering the amount of on-screen information via switching to a narrower, first-person perspective like Bethesda's games, or dramatically simplifying the game world, like BioWare's.
One of the two major interface issues is the challenge of applying the RPG traits and skills to the game world. Wasteland 2 has dozens of different skills, and while some, like weapon style, are passive, many others need to be used. For example, my initial four characters didn't have a lockpick skill, so as soon as I went up a level, I added some points to lockpicking. The next time I was confronted with a lock, I tried to figure out how to use that lockpicking skill, and it took me far too long to do so. Clicking directly on the door didn't work, and neither did trying to click on lockpicking from my character's profile. I thought that I might need lockpicks to use the skill, but the similar skills my characters came with didn't need items.
It's not the only difficulty, either. In one of the first main missions after the intro, my party got sent to an agricultural center whose plants and animals had been corrupted. The quest was not simply to clean them out, but to investigate what happened, save survivors, and fix what was broken, which required a variety of different skills, each one with its own annoyance. Too often in Wasteland 2's beta I felt like I was wrestling with game to try to play it, instead of being challenged within the game world. That's the kind of thing that can be tweaked or averted with an effective tutorial as development continues, though, which is why I still think Wasteland 2 has the potential to be great.
Seeing my choices pay off was empowering, even when it felt like I was scrabbling around in the dark. The leader of my Ranger group was a tough guy, a bit of a bully. I wasn't really sure how people would react to that, and truth be told, they all act a bit differently. Before I'd left the first area, I'd impressed a guard so much by demanding that he let me into the compound (which he never did) that he gave me a brand spanking new gun for being such a bad ass. I didn't get what I wanted, but my decision to be a complete arse was still rewarded.
Fortune wasn't always on my side, though. My medic wasn't up to snuff, for example, so we just had to watch as one of our comrades bled out after a particularly brutal encounter with a bunch of gun-toting bandits. My bad.
These difficult decisions reach a crescendo, at least in the beta, when two outposts need help, but only one can be saved. The result of ignoring one of these distress calls isn't immediately apparent, so when I left the settlement I'd saved, on a high note, and visited the forsaken second option, the weight of this off-the-cuff choice I made hit me like a sledgehammer. Everyone dead or dying, the whole place trashed, all because I had made a split-second call.
If you haven't noticed so far Wasteland 2 like the Fallout series has a vein of humour running through it. Those rabbits come as standard with a Monty Python reference. Narrative comments appear as you explore and are regularly amusing, such as (the Junkies are armed only with syringes and unsettling facial tics) and (you can't tell if you're supposed to eat the fruits or they're going to eat you). Character customisation includes the usual attribute (Toaster Repair) and gives you the option of choosing what brand cigarettes your character prefers. The main menu has a button for (Red Boots DLC - $49.95) which makes fun of you if you click it. I even found a hidden cache in the desert of thousands of E.T. game cartridges which were worth absolutely nothing. While serious and unsettling things happen in the Wasteland it's lovely to have these amusing moments now and again, and they turn a good RPG into an additively entertaining one.
As mentioned earlier, combat is entirely turn-based and is more than a little reminiscent of XCOM (or even fellow Kickstarter RPG Shadowrun Returns), just with the classic Action Points stuck back in. Movement in combat works similar, as in you have one box you can move within and still shoot and a larger box you can also move within but you won't be able to do anything afterwards. Taking cover makes you harder to hit, a percentage chance of hitting an enemy shows when you're ready to shoot (helpfully here appearing over every enemy at once unlike XCOM), reloading probably costs you your shooting privileges in that turn, and if someone falls they can sometimes be stabilised or they'll just die. Where it differs from XCOM is that combat isn't the entire game, and you can initiate it at any time. You can get the drop on most enemies if you're clever, or if you just fancy attacking a random innocent civilian you can do that too.
The combat system in Wasteland 2 is both simple and fun. Encounters are turned-based and play out in the game's isometric point of view to give players full view of the field. Players have a bit of variety in terms of how scenarios can play out. Because you are controlling each member of a squad as opposed to just one character, you can set up some nice tactical situations, such as splitting up a party to flank your enemies, or sending a sniper up to a high perch while having your brawlers do the grunt work. Turns typically have all the player characters act, one-by-one, followed by the enemy NPCs. The order, however, can get muddied if you get the drop on an enemy before starting the encounter, or vice versa.
There a tons of other systems to play with in combat, including a cover system, friendly fire, and a mid-encounter ambush system, which provided the most satisfying combat of my entire playthrough. My heavy weapons specialist, Cherry Bomb, was under heavy fire from raiders in the first level. On a whim, I decided to have her ambush them, not knowing entirely what it did. When it came time for the enemies turn, the chief raider that was griefing her to attempt to rush past, but Cherry Bomb stopped him quite literally dead in his tracks with a blast from her shotgun. It completely turned the tides of the combat scenario.
As a brief side note: I noticed there was a large variation of enemy characters to fight. During my time with the game, I encountered hostile raiders (a staple of any good post-apocalyptic game), a mutant frog, monstrous maggots, deadly (supaflies,) and mutated (spore) people. From what I've heard, the variety only expands as the game progresses, with different classes of raiders, synthetics, and more.
Then the nostalgia hits as you are presented with a very brown, very dusty isometric view of your environment. Your first task is to discover the fate of a fellow ranger who's gone missing. It's just enough of a carrot to get you setting out in the wasteland, hoping to make it to your destination without dying of thirst, radiation, or roaming bandits. I was entirely enraptured with Wasteland 2 for the majority of the introductory mission.
Then something bad happened; one of my characters was felled in combat. The interface told me he was bleeding, and would be dead in 100 turns. That's an eternity in this turn-based combat game, so I wasn't too concerned. I'd finish off the bandits, then tend to my wounded. Once combat ended however, my comatose patient began spurting blood. I was now informed he would be dead in 37 seconds. So began my infuriating struggle with the interface of Wasteland 2. Using skills is overly complex and doesn't always work the first time you click. With no tutorial to explain things, it is difficult for the player to know that bandages and blood packs do nothing to help a dying friend. Only a character with the surgery skill is capable of helping. Even then, the success rate of surgery is poor early in the game and the clock is ticking. Furthermore, a success is no guarantee of returning your comrade to the land of the living, as it may only improve him from almost dead to only mostly dead. In one instance, I performed surgery 33 times before finally reviving my sniper.
In some respects, Wasteland 2 is very archaic in its design, but it's also a game that has been boiling since before the wave of change found its way into every crack of modern roleplaying games, so its entirely understandable and something of a welcoming surprise. You begin your quest in as minimalistic a fashion as possible, and there are fewer weapons to toy with than expected. While there's plenty to see across the generously broad maps, it's mostly backdrop particulars and decorative tech. Its world, like once beloved actress Gwyneth Paltrow, is pretty on the surface, but ultimately empty upon finer inspection.
While the game is as much about its story as it is exploration, the combat is surely the meat-and-bones of the experience, as it represents something you'll be doing quite a bit in the wastes: killing stuff. For the most part, it's your typical turn-based, grid-style battle system, and immediately reminiscent of Fallout. Surprising, then, that Shadowrun is the game that crossed my mind upon my first encounter by the Radio Tower. Perhaps it's the inclusion of cover-based tactics across the battlegrounds, allowing for strategic advantage in hectic situations either way, it's a nice addition to an otherwise basic setup. As it stands, there aren't any terribly challenging matches to speak of, but it's easy to see where expert decision making will come in to play. There's still a lack of depth, and it's still more or less a group of people standing and shooting at each other, but its an evolutionary steps towards present-day systems in contrast to similarly oldschool titles.
Finally, there's an interview with Brian Fargo over at Red Bull Games:
That willingness to push players into hard choices is in Wasteland 2's DNA. For all its moments of tongue-in-cheek pop-referencing, the Fallout series in particular took players to some very dark places, where even the noblest of intentions could play out with horrible consequences. In the plans for the original Fallout, helping a town sheriff topple a local crime boss and casino owner would originally result in the town's stagnation, where siding with the crooks and thieves led to its economic boom. The outcomes were reversed for the final release, on the grounds that the outcome felt unfair.
In a scene that actually made it into the final game, a gang leader scoffs at your bravado as you attempt to join his crew, and orders you to gun down two unarmed prostitutes to prove your loyalty. Kill the women and you're in. Refuse and you're dead. And while killing prostitutes is exactly the sort of media-baiting that earns Grand Theft Auto headlines, according to Fargo the inclusion of scenes like these isn't just good storytelling, but something that fans demand.
"We are not pulling any punches in that regard," says Fargo of his previous games' darker themes. "My audience is older and expects a brutish post-apocalyptic world. The Road Warrior films certainly held nothing back from their universe and we don't intend to do so from Wasteland. This is another great aspect of crowd funding as it allows to make such a game without an outside force trying to tame it.)
"Perhaps it is a bit twisted but I actually quite enjoy when the most noble of actions ends up with a dire result. Life is not black or white and neither should good fiction in my eyes. Isn't that what makes Game of Thrones so riveting? So you can certainly count on similar scenarios happening, or characters making you think back on some of your actions and whether they were actually good."
